How to Save a Life
by Eternal L0ve
Summary: Auden swore to protect her lil sister from her abusive adpt mom. She is brought to CHB after a hellhound attack, but refuses to stay without Cristy. After her death, will her dad give her another chance to save a younger sister's live?
1. I Start a 'Your Mom' Fight

A/N: Okay, so this is my first PJO fanfic. I have four and a half chapters written for this already. I might possibly update it again tomorrow; but if not, I will next Wednesday, or Tuesday. If I get enough reviews, I might update tomorrow. I really don't know if this is worth publishing or not. I think it is. But tell me what you think, too. I personally, don't like this chapter as much as others. Oh and if I must, I will go back and change the next chapters before updating again.

Okay, I know it has Nico in it in the very first chapter, but don't judge it yet, okay? He's just the one I chose to bring her there; I don't know if it'll be Nico/OC yet. That could work itself in. But I'm not sure I wanna do it because everyone says they never turn out good. And besides, I'm halfway through the fifth chapter and she doesn't even know about the I'm-A-Demigod thing yet. She will, though.

And about the title. It's a song, yes. Okay, wait, I won't explain it yet because It'll ruin the plot.

Hope you like it. Read & review!

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How to Save a Life

Chapter 1: I start a 'Your Mom!' fight

Ah, school. No place I like better. Well, okay. That's a lie. There are a million places I like better. But schools the best place I can get to right now. And that's saying a lot, that I like school best, coming from me, a kid with ADHD _and_ dyslexia who makes strait D's and gets laughed at for most of the day. We get out early on Friday's, though. What a shame.

You see, school is more of a protection to me, rather than an educational source. It's a safe haven for me and my sister. Cristy's not really my sister; she's my adoptive sister. Well, wait, let me go back.

Apparently, the orphanage in Spencer County, Kentucky found me on their doorstep one night with a note that told my name and birthday. Yeah, that's really very cliché, I know. But that's what they told me. I kinda didn't believe them. But could I really help what they told me happened when I was, like, five months old? No, no I couldn't. I don't know if that's what actually happened, or if they are hiding something. The orphanage itself wasn't bad. Nor was it great. The family that ran it gave us food, shelter, your basic needs, but not much more than that.

So then, two years later, the Clark's adopted me, Rebecca and Adam. I was 2. They were the awesome-est people ever. They loved me like their own. Let's just put it as they were really good and kool parents. I even called them Mama and Daddy.

Then when I was six, they had Cristy. They had tried, like, six times to have a kid before but couldn't. That was their motivation for adopting me. They'd tried again and Cristy was born. I love her like a sister- she _is_my sister, in the same sense Rebecca and Adam were my mom and dad. I love the _snot_ outta her.

So why am I talking past tense with Rebecca and Adam? 'Cause they died. How? I dunno for sure. I got off the bus after second grade and found Cristy crying in her crib. Her room was in the middle of my room and their room. In that room, I found both their dead bodies, something an eight year old should never, ever experience. It traumatized me that did. I started screaming, making two year old Cristy scream harder. There were multiple deep scratch wounds, like they were mauled by like, a bear or something. Adam went to work around thirty minutes after I get on the bus for school, so whoever-or _what_ever-must have done it right after I left.

Why didn't they get Cristy too? She was right there all day in the next room over. Why Rebecca and Adam? What did they ever do? Did they do it 'cause of me? Did they want me instead? Seems like it now.

They shipped me and Cristy off to an orphanage in New York (we'd moved to New York a few months earlier.). There, I cried for days, but the good thing was, in that total craptastic orphanage, other than not developing PTSD, I made a best friend. Loren Ages (he hated his name) was two years older than me, and he was awesome. For three years, he was my best friend ever. Then he disappeared. I waited for a long, long time. He never came back.

That was the trigger for my depression, I think. Everything changed when he left, or died or whatever. I got all depressed and unsocial. First I got really mad. Mad at Loren for leaving me, mad at the idiot Mrs. Belle who ran the orphanage for not even filing a missing person report or Amber alert (she probably didn't care enough, or notice), mad at myself for making him run away, and mad at the world for my suck-y life.

_And_that was also the year a family, the Grayson's, adopted me and Cristy. It helped a lot with the depression thing.

They were abusive, not sexually, just physically. I escaped them once to those social service people (I'm not good at vocabulary) and reported them. Now, the man, Greg, was in jail even though the women, Morgan, did most of it. She tricked them. And she took that event and learned from it.

That's why I still live in her horrible excuse for a home, love school, now, have no realistic way of escaping, and Cristy's growing up terribly.

School's a protection for us, protects us from Morgan. She can't hurt, hurt us in public.

She takes us to school daily, waits 30 minutes so she'll know if we try to run away, knows I won't dare run during school because they called the cops on the last kid who did that, picks us up everyday, and gets there early, so don't say we have time to run. Morgan's smart.

I've tried every way to get away except, like, two. And I can't do those because they involve leaving Cristy alone.

Cristy's all I have left in the world; I'm all she has. I have to do everything I can to protect that little girl. I have to be her motherly figure. She needs love in her life, and I'm the only one capable of that.

(/)(\)(/)(\)

Jenna Dumbkin is the head cheerleader of Eastwood Middle School. Okay, her real name's Jenna Dunkin, but I call her that because she's so überly stupid it's not even funny. Dumbkin has long, flow-y, chocolate-brown ringlets and wide dark blue eyes that were right now glaring at me for reasons unknown. She and her totally fake tan were a 10 on that stupid Hotness Scale boys have. I personally would give her, like, a 4.

Well, she sits right in front of me during first period Reading and is shaking me into focus. I mean really shaking me, like grabbing my arm holding up my head and starts violently shaking me. I could have done without the shaking; my head falling alerted me of my surroundings quickly. "Pay attention, retard!" Jenna says in that annoying whisper-yell thing. I looked around the room, ignoring her comment. The teacher was standing by some guy I'd never seen before and staring expectantly at me.

The teacher, Mrs. Webster, seemed around eighty years old with light brown hair that was almost completely grey stretched back into a tight bun on the base of her neck. She has bifocals and is always squinting, making her wrinkled face look like a constipated pit bull. And she had on this weird navy blue dress with little red flowers all over it that looked like it was made in the 1920s. Heck, it probably was.

"What!" I said in annoyance. She did that smirk and bratty nod combo toward the teacher that said 'you are _such_ an _idiot_!' It made me want to punch her in the face and brake her nose really bad so it stays crooked and see how the guys like her then.

"God, I _hate_ cheerleader!" I said under my breath. But I guess it was a little _too_ loud because a few guys were snickering and even that new kid way up front had a little half-smirk.

"What!" I said to Mrs. Webster in the exact same tone as before.

Jenna glared at me, _and_ the teacher glared at me and said, "Say your name, Clark!"

"Why? You just did." She glared harder. She has horrible glares. Really, they are. They totally suck. Cristy can glare better than she.

"Okay, okay," I said, "I assume it's for Dude-who's-name-I-don't-know, so…Hi!," I waved, "I'm Auden Clark! And now, I'm gonna go." I said half of that in fake cheeriness. I went back to staring out the window, watching the gentle May breeze blow the three tall oak trees by the school. School's out soon. We have until the 3rd of next month. Did I say how much I freakin' hate school? I do. But I like it, too. Compared to Morgan's house, which I loathe with a fiery passion from the depths of my heart I didn't even know I had until eight months ago, I absolutely love school. This proves there are cases where you can love and hate something. So ha, world, HA!

Ooo, that reminds me of that one time Loren slammed a revolving door on this fat guy's foot and-the teacher screamed my last name again and I yell, "What _do_ you want, woman?"

"I want you to listen for a change! Nico, here, is _going_ to sit _behind_ you because it's the only _seat_ left." She said, stressing the most random words. Well, that's because you hate me and thought moving me to the last row, last seat by the window, and being last to do everything would be awesome punishment for it. Well, I kinda like it, so one point for me, loser!

"And you're telling me this why…?"

"I want you to explain things to him." Aw, can't you? You're closer. And, plus, it's real easy! Tell him it's a Reading class and I think he could figure the rest out, it's self-explanatory.

"…And?"

"And you're gonna do it!" Some guy named Trevor said, "To who?" and some other guy then muttered, "Your mom!" They started this big Your Mom fight now. You see, recently the guys in my class have gotten obsessed with your mom jokes. And, Mrs. Webster totally _sucks_ at getting kids to shut up. Soon, most of the class was talking or yelling to somebody.

The teacher started yelling, I replied, "Okay." to no one, and Nico Whoever came to sit behind me. I don't guess anyone was paying attention to him; they were all in random conversation because they knew the teacher wouldn't get them calmed down for somewhere around fifteen minutes.

So I turned around and said, "Hi." to Nico.

He said, "Hi." back.

I swung my legs over the top of the chair/desk thing (it's a chair with a desktop attached-very easy to break.) and started absentmindedly swinging them. There's plenty of room to do so because there's only four seats in this row, Mrs. Webster had the seats all equal in the front of the rows, and Nico had his desk scooted back against the wall. I used to have that desk. I loved it against the wall like that. You could see what everyone was doing. And you can see if you're being attacked. No one can sneak up from behind and stab you in the back. Yes, yes I am paranoid. I have trusting issues, and self-trusting issues. Hey, what does the prefix para even mean? There's paranoid, paranoia, paranormal, paragraph, paraphrase, paralyze, parasail…It sounds like it means, like, beyond or something. Like beyond normal. Or something to do with being attached. Like attached to a sail.

Okay, well, and then I got moved up a seat because Mrs. Webster got annoyed that the seats went like Kate, Jenna, nobody, me. So she moved the nobody seat to the back so it wouldn't look weird. I swear I do believe she has OCD.

"Well, Mrs. Webster (that's this horrible teacher) said for me to explain stuff for you. I have no clue what she meant by 'things'. Uhh…this class has been proven a Reading class and not Auden's Torture Room (ATR), as much as it may seem. Well, the rest is simple. First she makes us read (which I fake), then she makes us read crap _orally_, and _then_ she goes over the forms of whatever the crap she makes us read is about. And then she had that dumb, 'And what have we learned today, children?' thing."

"Ummm…Okay." Nico said. Okay, so, I just knew the kids were going to dub him as Goth Boy. Everything he wore was black: T-Shirt (it said something I didn't feel like reading. Nor did I really care about.), jeans, Converses. Hey, look, we have the same shoes on. His hair was black and messy: not dyed. Good, I don't like those kids who dye their hair black for whatever reason. And even his freakin' eyes were black. They looked sad, but had a weird look, too…like serial killer's eyes. Like John Brown's eyes, if you know what I mean. And the only reason I remember that dude's name was because it's and easy name and in those pictures of him they showed us in American History, he looked freakin' sadistic! He's the guy who killed all the slave owners n the name of God, right? And I am _not_ comparing Nico to him, okay. Thought I'd clear that up. I bet he has _mean_ death glares.

I turned around and put my head down, legs swinging. I remembered the first day of this school. It was just two weeks after the rest of the kids started school and three days after I got to Morgan's house. They dubbed me Sunshine Girl at first. I think that was because I was wearing a bright yellow t-shirt, randomly said how much I like being outside during PE when we were outside playing with Frisbees, and because I randomly started humming You Are My Sunshine 'cause something reminded me of Rebecca and that was our song.

The thing about that song was that was the first song I learned, not Happy Birthday to You, not Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Rebecca sang me to sleep with it every night. It was _our_ song.

Then they redubbed me Depressed Chick the week after that.

I got bored and started listening in on random people's conversations.

Some guy said, "You did _what_? To _who_? For _how_ many pieces of gum?" Okay! I don't want to know what it is he's talking about.

Some other boy screamed, "No, James, I won't make out with you!"

The other guy, James, yelled, "Shut up, Dude!" Ugh, boys here are such immature idiots.

"Awww! It's so cute!" Ew, boring.

Some girl with a real girly voice was saying, "…monkey was frickin' pink! And it chased Freddie into those real tall cactuses. Then your dad walks in and starts conversing with a dime about the size of…" Don't really care…and it's cact_i_.

Travis was saying, "This book is gay."

Then Mrs. Webster says, "That book is an inanimate object. It does not have sexual preferences. Therefore, it cannot be gay."

A guy that sounded like that James kid from before said, "Oh, wow."

Okay this is boring.

A) I could wait for my thoughts to lead to something depressing

B) Talk to Nico, 'cause he's the only one who isn't talking.

C) Hope for class to start soon.

Yeah, I chose B.

I turned around and Nico was glaring at the wall.

"What's up with you?"

He turned his glare on me (suspicion correct) and said, "Why do you care!"

"Hey, now, dude!" I hate it when people yell at me. Or accuse me. It gets me mad.

"Sorry. I just don't want to be here."

"You look mad at the world."

"Guess that's reasonable." Nico said under his breath.

I stared at him for a second, him staring back intently, and then nodded.

Nico's not that talkative. I turn back around…again. Mrs. Webster's almost got everything in hand again. Crap.

She ended her speech with, "And, Trevor, it's to _whom_, not who."

"Whatever!" Trevor says in exasperation.

"Well, now, class, we are going to skip reading our library books since so much time has been wasted," She stopped to glare around the room, "So we are going to cut to reading aloud from our books." Ah, great. She never changes order of things-except on test days.

She made Kate Fraser start reading. Kate's one of the smartest people in the grade-strait 99-100s. She cried once because she got an 85 on a history report. She had red hair and wears it up in some sort of braid everyday. She has shiny, near sided, green eyes that are normally wide, happy, and naive. She sits in the first seat in this row, right in front of Jenna.

She read, "The winter of '42 was harsh; blizzards raided the area of…" I droned out the rest. This book was about this pioneer farm girl or someone whom I hope gets killed by the 'terrible winter's chill' or 'the coyote that killed Mother's precious ox' to avenge the loss of so many of my brain cells.

And, crap, it's almost my turn to read. I don't wanna, I did yesterday. Mrs. Webster goes now the rows in order (OCD again). I didn't walk in this room this morning planning to embarrass myself again. Hmm…maybe I can…

"Hey, is that a cow!" I said loudly, pointing out the window. We were on the second story, and basically all you could see was the driveway, those three oak trees, and the road with a few houses and this church on the other side of it.

But I had seen something running around the side of the school, out of my vision. It looked weirdly like a giant dog, like that thing that had chased me once when I was living in the orphanage in New York, but smaller and a little lighter. I just called it a cow because that was the second thing I thought of, which is weird because you would think I would think of 'wolf' or something after 'giant dog'.

Half the class then got distracted, either standing up to see out the window to see what the heck I was talking about or rushing over to it (Trevor and that kid that was fighting with him earlier. I think his name is Aaron. They sit in the back of the row beside mine and had gone through the gap between mine and Nico's desk). Or maybe they caught on and wanted to prevent the force-reading of that stupid book.

"There is _no_ cow out there!" Aaron, I think, said.

"No, Auden just saw your mom walk by." Oh, that's mean.

And that's how I distracted the class, leading to the second big Your Mom fight of the morning.

Trevor and Aaron were standing right by me being really loud. I was starting to get annoyed by the loudness, even though it was getting me out of stuff. This is so boring. I wish this was a more interesting class, like music class with Mrs. Sarah.

On part of the insult war went like so:

"You are so weird!"

"Your face is so weird."

"Your mom is weird."

"Yeah, well your dad's weird."

Then Mrs. Webster actually screams, "Shut up!" Wow. I haven't heard her yell like that since Michael and James knocked that bookshelf down during one of their fights. Our class had so many fights they made a brand new discipline code for us. They wrote our name's now on a list and if two teachers wrote our name down we got isolated lunch in the principle's office the next day. And if we got that twice, we'd get after school detention. And Morgan won't let me go to that so I get detention during the school day a lot.

"Now, we are going to have this lesson and your going to like it!" I snickered. That's weird. "You all are going on the discipline list! Everyone!" Whoa, whoa, slow down girl, you're making Kate cry! I snickered again. "And you twice, Auden Clark!" Ooo, I'm scared. What's it gonna do, huh? Nothing! Nothing you can guarantee. "Now, then. Did anyone notice the simile in the paragraph nice little Katie just read? A simile is a form of comparison using like or as. And-"

The bell rings, thank God.

"Wait, wait, and wait. No one moves until you answer: What did you learn today." Ugh, just let us get outta here! I bet your piss-y attitude will go away if you get rid of us.

Trevor says in a bored but questioning voice, "Inanimate objects don't have sexual preferences?"

That girly-girl says, "Charlie Davis broke is ankle in football practice yesterday!"

Whispers spread the room. Oh, noooo! I'm soo sorry for him! Like I care. Who the heck is he, anyway?

"Oh, just get out of my classroom!" Mrs. Webster says in exasperation. Gladly.

With that, we leave.


	2. School

A/N: Okay, so I decided to update again this morning to get it over with while I can. Thanks to the two people who reviewed earlier. They were great! This chapter is about all her classes and their descriptions and stuff. This is the chapter I don't like much. But my story will get more interesting after the first two chapters. Morgan and Cristy are in the next one!

Oh, and by the way, some of the name's of teachers are kind of weird. Blame my friend, Sarah, for that. She picked out teacher names.

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How to Save a Life

Chapter 2: School

After that little 46 minute scene with the craziest teacher ever, I had Math, my third most hated class. I hate the class, not the teacher. Last period I hated both. I just really don't understand math.

Our teacher's named Mr. Grigori. He's young, just like 23, and he just started here in January, his first teaching job. He was hired after the old math teacher got fired for something like having an affair with one of the eight grade teachers. He's got dirty blond hair that's kind of longish and light blue eyes that remind me of Jumbi's eyes off _The Unborn_.

He's kind of not used to being around pre-teens. I mean, after how many years? Six? Well, he was the top of his University's class. After that many years of focusing on school and smart people things, what do you expect him to do around a bunch of 13-year-olds going through puberty?

He recently got computers in his classroom, so it's more like a computer lab than a classroom. There are computers because he had us do this tutor thing on-line and got consent for them so he didn't have to make us go to the computer lab everyday. And he also put us in groups of three. Sometimes he'd give us points for doing good stuff like reading, answering a question right, or getting A's on our test. And he'd award the group with the most with chocolate. It's for motivational reasons, I guess.

Well, I took my seat by my partners, Heather and Austin. Heather's this kinda fat girl with frizzy brown hair and she doesn't really care about school (or life in general as far as I can tell) so she's not much of a help. Her dad died a month ago. Austin's this funny guy most people think is really stupid, but he's really smart in math. He had wavy brown hair and brown eyes and teachers hate him. Austin cusses out technology and jokes a lot. I guess you can call him my friend. He's funny and stuff and he likes me, as in as a friend like.

"Hello, students," Mr. Grigori said all formal like. Hehe., "Today, because of upcoming finals, we are taking a review test on the Internet. This is for a daily grade. It will cover all you should have learned since the beginning of this school year." He wrote the website on the marker board.

Ugh, that sounds so boring. I really hate his pop quizzes.

Well, I had to lean over to ask Heather what the board said, because she knows I have dyslexia and Mr. Grigori has really small hand writing. And plus websites sometimes have random letters that don't spell anything, so I wouldn't trust myself to try and guess. So I typed it in and nothing happened until Austin screamed, "This computer's a piece of _poop_!"

"Like your face." I whispered.

"Oh, that's not cool, man. Not nice at all." He whispered back.

Heather laughed and said, "Good one, Auden."

And then nothing much happened the rest of the period. Until the end when I screamed, "Oh, my gosh!"

"What?" Austin said.

"I got a sixty two. That's passing!"

"Oh, wow." Heather said.

Third period was science class. Believe it or not, I actually like this class. Sure, I don't like doing work out of the science book every other day, but I did like concepts and stuff. The astronomy part is my favorite, then the genealogy part. I think those are cool.

I want to be a doctor. Yeah, I probably won't be able to do that professionally but still. I used to want to be a singer, but the Grayson's happened and now all I want to do is be a doctor and help heal people because no one innocent should go through it, like Cristy for example.

The Science teacher's name is Mrs. Shoester. Yeah, I know it's a really weird name. I think maybe her ancestors made up that name to be funny. And ironically enough, she hates shoes. She says they make her feel restricted and claustrophobic. She comes to class barefoot everyday. I wonder if the principal knows.

She's pretty young, too, like 35-ish. She has frizzy brown curls that she keeps up in a high ponytail to keep out of her face. She's pretty, too, with sparkly green eyes. She's not strict, but the students do what she says because, like, almost everyone likes her. Including me, except that one time I called her Mrs. Shoe to see what she'd do. Yeah, she got mad.

Just then Nico walks in and sits in the back corner table. The tables in this class are two people to a table with out the little desk/chair things. I sit in the exact middle of the classroom. It feels weird sometimes, like everyone is watching me, because there's like an equal amount of people all around me and they could all attack me and I couldn't fight them all off from every side like that.

Then Mrs. Shoester says that we need to get in two people groups. Everyone quickly got up and rushed to sit with their friend. And that basically left me, Nico, and this really weird boy named Francis. He's really weird and will talk to everyone about stuff like boogers and his how weirdly shaped his dog's poop have gotten over the last two weeks. Ah, you really don't want to experience that.

So I glanced at Nico, who glanced at Francis, made a funny looking disgusted face, then glanced back at me and nodded me over.

"Hi." I said, sitting down. He nodded. "Thanks for not making me be with Francis, over there."

"You know I did it for me, not you."

"Yeah, well, still."

Then Mrs. Shoester said, "Alright, guys do Chapter Review on page 257. It's due tomorrow. Work together as a group." She doesn't talk much, but she's still nice.

This chapter was about animal behaviors and instincts, stuff like that. I didn't notice we'd gotten to the end of the chapter already. Crap, that means there's a test soon, probably Friday.

"So, uh, where're you from?" I said in attempted small talk.

"Um, I guess you could say Los Angelus."

"You guess?" I asked, raising one eyebrow. Why'd he say um before answering?

"That or New York City. Take your pick."

"Umm, alright. That's not confusing at all." Sarcasm there, folks.

"It's not, really."

"O…Kay? Well, I'm from Kentucky. No, I take that back. They say I'm from Kentucky, they guess I am. I don't guess any one really knows, though."

"Now, _that's_ not confusing."

I smile a little and say, "It's not, really."

Nico mutters, "Copy cat."

"Real mature there."

"Yep, I know."

"Well, okay, so no one knows where I was born because both of my parents are dead and the orphanage in Kentucky found me."

"Are you sure about that?"

"About what?"

"Your parents both are dead."

"Well, no. It can't easily be proven, now, can it? I'm not sure of much, anymore." I said that last part quietly. I'm not sure Nico even heard it. That or he ignored it.

"You don't have their names, do you?"

"Nope."

"Well, that sure makes it harder." His voice had a weird tone, like he meant something other than the obvious.

"No way, Nico!" I said in fake disbelief. Sarcasm's a big part of my live, people. Deal with it.

"Oh, never mind."

I turn to page 257. Oh, man there's like forty questions.

"Hey, Nico, is that first word migration or gramition?" I whispered. I don't know why I whispered, I just did. And I'm pretty sure the answer to that's migration. God, I hate big words.

"Gramition? Is that even a word?"

"Not that I remember." Hmm. It could be the mixture of grammar and addition. Like the addition of grammar or something.

"Well, then, I guess it's migration."

"You guess?"

"It's not like I can read it. I'm dyslexic."

"Well, so am I!"

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"That sucks."

"I know, and I was kinda relying on you to help me read this right."

"Me too."

"This sucks for us." I said. Then I added under my breadth, "Since when doesn't my life suck."

After that I had technology class with Mr. Woodson. He's old and fat with dark brown eyes and only around five strands of white hair left on his balding head that he keeps combed over to the side. His whole attitude shows he doesn't really give much about the world around him and would much rather be asleep in some recliner in a dark room far away from us, but he can't because he has to get money somehow so he won't have to live as a hobo without a nice soft bed to sleep in and die of starvation. He basically lets everyone get away with anything and has been caught asleep in his chair more than ten times.

So basically, I had a free period to do nothing.

Okay, so, four of my classes are shorted than the others: technology, art, P.E., and music, the related arts classes. Now, we have nine class periods, two more than most schools, but we go to school for the same amount of time as normal schools.

Yes, I realize my school is really weird.

_Then_, for fifth period, I had Art with Mrs. Lanson. She's pretty cool, and an awesome artist. Her short blond hair has purple and green highlights. And yes, they look really cool. She wears skirts a lot and makes sure her clothes are opposite colors, you know, like purple to yellow, red to green, and blue to orange.

And the thing about her is she has a lot of screwed up mental problems (like I should talk). It's pretty obvious she has ADHD (like me) and she seems minor-ly (if possible) schizophrenic. But I don't think teachers are allowed to be, so she's probably not. She's quiet and shy and she talks to herself a lot.

To bad for me, I'm crappy at drawing people (I prefer abstract or landscapes if its like a sunset over an ocean type thing) and I have a B average in here because every time I try to draw pictures of people (which is often), it turns out looking like nothing nature could ever (probably) event. Like that time we had to draw a person and it looked like some man-eating blob that was destroying the world, eating one innocent citizen at a time.

And that's what I left the room walking to lunch thinking of. What if the world's population was destroyed by some alien blob from a planet called Pikaffe who eats people's internal organs and this was me predicting the apocalypse by my suckish drawing? Well, I would use my predicament to my advantage and get to a place really steep and high that the blob couldn't climb to. Or if that deemed impossible I could gather an army and surprise attack the blob, killing it, and being forced to re-populate the Earth with said army because everyone else had been digested by the Pikaffe Blob. Oh, that could make a good horror movie.

Just then the lights went out, causing me to freak out for a second. I mean, I really hate the darkness, and I'd just been thinking about getting eaten by a giant blob, and I have high imagination problems. If you were me, you would freak out a little, too.

Well, the sudden change in light surprised me and I ended up running into a wall. And it was the corner of a wall, too, so it hurt worse than running into a flat wall. And so this surprised me more and I dropped my notebook and stuff. The rebound caught me off guard, too, and I plummeted backwards into someone knocking them down with me.

Oh. My. Gosh. I feel so stupid, like a total dweeb. Ugh.

I immediately rolled off whomever and got up on my knees. I was about to start rambling off 'sorry' until I embarrassed myself further, but then I saw who it was.

I had rear ended Jenna Dumbkin. And all the lights were off, so she couldn't see, either. She'll think I totally jump attacked her.

I was about ready to start telling her off because no way in _heck_ was I gonna say sorry to _her_, but she bet me to it.

"What the hell was that for!"

"Please." I said, sarcastically, "Like I would purposely touch you!"

"Grr!" Oh, wow she actually growled. I snickered.

"You are so stupid."

"Grr!" Oh, haha. She growled at me again. I'm so intimidating. Hehe.

"What are you? A freakin' rabid Chihuahua?"

"Shut your damn mouth, you idiotic retard."

"Like you should talk, Dumbkin."

Oh, and that infuriated her to the max. She totally attacked me, swinging back her fist toward my face, but I dodged easily, seeing that coming.

That embarrassing her, she tried to ignore the whole of this and walk away there. But I didn't let her.

"Next time, watch the heck where you're going!" She shouted, and shoved past me, her two followers, Chelsea and Brianna, well, following her, like normal.

I grabbed her arm and jerked her back. She stumbled on the way.

And just to clear some things up here, I'm not normally this violent. I'm normally a calm and laid back person but I've wanted to tell this girl off for a really long time. And when I do yell at people, it would be for how wrong they are, not what they say about me, 'cause, honestly, I don't care about what they say. But this girl had got me all fired up, and I'm really irritable for some reason lately. I'm the type of girl who holds in all her problems and anger because there's no one to talk it out to, and it just explodes out on random people who make me mad enough. And that's kind of hard to do. Well, for the exception of Morgan and stuck ups like Jenna.

But I am also the type of girl who hates close range attacks; therefore, is not very good at fighting. Well, fighting as in fist fighting or fencing. I've never really tried any other type; sure I want to, but I've never really had a chance. I have punched three people before, though.

Therefore, because I have no other means, I normally fight with words (as in telling them off) or throw random things at their heads. The latter's pretty funny, too.

"You think I'm done with you? Man, you're even dumber than I thought you. You think you can shove your way through people like you own them, like you own the world. Well, you don't! Your mind is too clouded up with the most stupid things that you can't see you're not that popular hot girl you want to be. Can't you see everyone hates your guts? Those so-called friends, Brianna and Chelsea, they aren't your friends. They probably only follow you around because you paid them or out of fear." I practically screamed. Brianna and Chelsea looked horrified at being mentioned. Brianna was looking everywhere but at me and Jenna and she was blushing with wide eyes. Chelsea was pale and staring at Jenna with wide, kinda guilty eyes, shaking her head very fast.

"Stuck up, bitchy wanna-bes, like yourself, cannot survive this world, much to your surprise. It'll kill you before you know it. You must be brave, strong, and a bunch of other things I'm not. If I were, I'd have found some way to escape this life scenario and go to some other one, safely, with Cristy. One that's happier and doesn't evolve so much pain and loss. One where you're not forced to watch your little sister get almost beaten to death every weekend. Where you can change that." The lights had came on somewhere in the middle of that.

Of course, I'd find some way to show my depressed side in a rant to some girl who'd just pissed me off. My feelings go from angry to sad so quickly nowadays. No, I'm not bipolar.

Jenna was standing there with a glare full of rage pointed strait at me. I bet my little speech didn't affect her at all. And I was standing there my gaze pointed at the ground so no one could see how upset I was, so no one could see the tears in my eyes, threatening to flow. I bet Jenna feels proud; she made the girl she was fighting with cry without doing anything. Technically, I made myself cry, but her arrogant brain would think she did.

I shoved my way past the people watching this. Most had been chanting, "Fight! Fight! Fight!" but had shut up after those last few sentences. I continued my way to lunch, though I wasn't hungry. I didn't feel like eating.

(/)(\)(/)(\)

I was singing on my way to English class, my second most hated class. Why, you ask, if I'm in a very sad mood and going to a class I hate? Well, it's not like it was loud and cheerful; it just randomly popped in my mind. I was singing Turn It Off by Paramore under my breath and I doubt anyone heard me.

"And the worst part is, before it gets any better we're headed for a cliff, and on the freefall I will realize I'm better off when I hit the bottom." That's the chorus and the only part I feel like remembering. Can you see where I get depression outta that? I don't think that's the real meaning of this song, though. I think it was something to do with God or something.

Mr. Lobb's sixth period Language Arts class is horrible, he's horrible, and I'm totally flunking it. He's really strict and doesn't allow anything at all to pass, especially by me, whom he hates with a passion. No talking, whispering, passing notes, touching, running, gum, candy, phones, iPods, coughing to loudly, etc. He's really an evil person whom should never exist in this world so much I really feel very sorry for any family he might have (if he hasn't killed them for laughing yet. Well, really, I don't see how they could ever laugh being related to him. I think the misery would be too painful.).

It's rumored he keeps a whip in the third drawer on the right side of his desk (The one that's always been locked). I think Austin (You know. The guy in my group in Mr. Grigori's class) started that rumor, but I'm willing to believe in that with my full extent.

Then, for seventh period, I had my favorite class ever with my favorite teacher in the whole world. Mrs. Sarah teaches music class. She's awesomely awesome and nice with deep brown eyes and long dark brown hair. Most guys think she's hot. We both wanted me to be in band (which she conducts, too), but there's no way in heck Morgan's gonna let me go to all the afterschool stuff. The only bad thing about her class is that it's shorter, even though it should be way longer.

And another thing about me is that I can play the guitar (WHOO) and Mrs. Sarah thinks I'm awesome at it (WHOO^2) but the only place I can practice and stuff is in her music class. At my old school, they let me play either the piano, flute, or guitar and I picked the guitar.

I'm kinda athletic, you know, like good at sports and stuff. Let's just say, I'd be participating in a lot more things than I am now if Morgan would let me out of the house.

Okay, so, I have P.E. for eighth period. I'd actually like this class a little bit if it weren't for the teacher, Mr. Piles (AKA: Mr. Piles of Poop.). He's a big pervert, has girls wear really short shorts for our uniform, and stares at their butts for the whole class. I seriously think he's a pedophile who moved from a different state in disguise as an innocent P.E. teacher.

Well, our class has boys and girls playing together, and includes Austin, Heather, Jenna, Chelsea, Katie, Nico Something-I-Have-Never-Bothered-To-Figure-Out, a lot of other people, and me. Today we went outside to play volleyball, and our team (that had Austin and Nico) were winning, even though the other team had the volleyball players on it.

Once, during that, I spiked it and the ball hit Heather on the top of the head, and I started snickering and she starts tearing up. That was funny; she's such a cry baby. I said, "Oh, get over yourself; it didn't hurt that bad. That wasn't even hard enough for a concussion. You'll be okay, so shut up so we can beat you already." That made her cry. Actually cry. She annoys me, so much. She's used to being spoiled. She's used to so many people pitying her because her dad died, that she breaks down we someone doesn't.

Then the last period was Social Studies with Mrs. Price. She's tall with short black hair and nice to all the preps and stuck-ups, and people like Jenna. And her class is really boring, but she shows lots of pictures and videos on the projector.

And that's really all to say about that class, other than it sucks that it's the last class of the day. Personally, I think Mrs. Sarah's class should be last, so it can calm me and get me happier before I start my night.

The last bell rung. I hate that bell. It symbolizes the end of school, something most kids look forward to, but that I hate. It means I have to once again force myself into Morgan's car, knowing what will come.

And I hate it so much knowing what will happen when we get 'home' but not being able to do anything with the foreknowledge. I can't do anything. It makes me feel so useless, like I shouldn't be alive. But I have to be, because someone has to stay and love and protect Cristy. She doesn't have anyone else; she's reliant on me.

And I get into that car once again, hoping that I can protect her, hoping somehow we'll find a way out of this, hoping, in the least, I'll find a way to get Cristy out of this.

Though most of the clues I've found lead to that hope being non-existent.

* * *

Okay, end chapter author's note: If there's any spelling mistakes or facts wrong about the books or something, correct me, okay? And please review! Like always.


	3. Dreams

A/N: This chapter is shorter than the others. But I like it better. I really like ch. 4 better though. So thanks for the people who have reviewed/alerted/favorited. It's greatly apperciated.

* * *

How to Save a Life

Chapter 3:Dreams

Cristy Clark was standing patiently by her school looking very happy when Morgan drove up in her white Pontiac to get her. She's very patient for a seven year old who looked ready to tell me something really exciting. I love it when she's happy; her smile is so cute, it makes me want to smile, too. I don't, though, because my smiles look too sad to be called smiles anymore.

She opened the car door and bounced in beside me in the backseat, her purple backpack almost getting hung in the door. I silently wondered why the heck she wanted to get in this car so badly.

"Guess what, Auden! Guess what!" said Cristy with a big smile on her face. She calls me Auden, now. I used to make her call me 'Sissy' because I didn't like the way she pronounced 'Auden'; it sounded too much like 'Arwin'.

Before I had a chance to ask, "What?" back, Morgan yelled, "Shut the hole in your face!" Ooo, that's the scariest thing ever. But it was though, every thing that woman said was to Cristy.

The smile on Cristy's face faded long enough for her to glare at Morgan through the mirror, and then it came back and she was about to say something, but I stopped her.

"Shhh," I whispered, putting a finger to her mouth, "Tell me later, okay?"

She gave me that stubborn look that said she wanted to argue with me. I stared back at her intently. "Okay." She whispered, slumping down in the seat, smile off her face. Aw, I feel bad now. Cristy pulled her little white stuffed bear that she's had since she was two out of her backpack and hugged it. She takes that thing everywhere, and she named it Olivia.

Cristy Michaela Clark is a really cute seven year old first grader in Eastwood Primary School. She looks nothing at all like me, almost-black-but-still-brown hair with bangs that I cut down to her shoulders because it looks really cute like that. She has the cutest eyes too that I guess you could call hazel. Well, they're this light-green-mixed-with-grey color with little specks of blue and specks of gold around the irises. Yes, gold; it's too light for brown and too dark for yellow. She has a cute button nose, can't pronounce her R's, is kind of shy, and loves the color purple. But that big blue bruise on her cheek from where Morgan punched her a few days ago totally ruined the innocent Happy Child look. It almost turned out to be a black eye, but not quite. I got so mad that day, I almost attacked Morgan (if you haven't noticed, I have a slight anger problem around people I hate. But I find in this incident, it was rather unavoidable) but I restrained myself. I did tell her off for a good five minutes, which afterwards resulted in double beatings for me. I take those just for Cristy; if it wasn't for her, I guarantee I would fight back.

On the ride home, which is way too short, Morgan yelled at us a few times, but other than that, it was totally silent.

We arrived. Morgan's house is a very bad one. It's two-story, very dirty, squeaks everywhere you walk, and leaks in the rain. Now, I don't know much about architecture, but I do know when a house is leaning sideways like this one, it is unstable and should not be lived in. But we do anyway. It's not like Morgan give's any kind of crap about it. There's a garage connected to it that's in better shape than it is; and there is a door that goes to the house.

As soon as we walked over the threshold of said door, we were screamed at to go do laundry. Okay, here's how this works. First, Morgan gives us stuff to do together and watches us so if we start slacking she can beat us into working harder. Then, she separates us and normally watches Cristy because she knows she gets tired easily (Come on, she's seven!) and because she knows if she hurts Cristy, I'll react in a way that gives her an excuse to beat me, too. And after all that, she randomly hits us and laughs for little things that are no one's fault.

During laundry I only got hit twice! Whoo. And that was only because I stopped to help Cristy because her arms got tired. The second time was because I was good for a while and she just wanted to.

Then she separated us. She told me to go polish the silverware in the kitchen. Uh, that is just a wired chore. And really random. She always gave me the easier jobs and Cristy the harder ones, just because she knows Cristy will mess up and she likes hurting her more than me for some reason.

Why don't I just call social services? Because we don't have phones here. None. Morgan doesn't have a cell phone either; she's really weird. And for the record, that's a really small insult.

Apparently, Cristy had to carry heavy boxes of Morgan's random junk down from the attic. Poor child.

And the rest of the night continued with nothing abnormal happening.

(/)(\)(/)(\)

Cristy and I share one bedroom. It's on the second story, very small, but has two beds shoved inside it. Cristy normally can't go to sleep in a bed by herself; she likes to snuggle. So I get up and move to the other bed after she is asleep.

And that's what happened today, except right before Cristy is asleep, I ask, "Hey! I almost forgot! What were you gonna tell me in the car?"

Her sleepy face looked confused for a moment, then realization dawned on her, and she said with a smile, "Oh, we get to go on a field trip next Monday!" That's in six more days; today is Monday.

I smile because that's what she is expecting and say, "That's cool!"

"I know." She says with a yawn. Soon after, she's asleep.

I crawl out of that bed, on the right wall, and onto the one on the left. Now, you must realize, I cannot fall asleep without some form of background noise, like a fan or my iPod or something. Normally I listen to my iPod and wake up sometime during the night to turn it off when it gets to a loud song or from a dream. I got that silver iPod for my eighth birthday from Rebecca and Adam. Thankfully, it hasn't been stolen, lost, confiscated, or broken over those years since.

I fell asleep after a few minutes, not even remembering what song it was on.

My dream was weird. It was random detailed scenes of things I'd never seen before. And I don't mean pictures; I mean it was like me watching video clips of myself.

First, I was running down a street at night. I could see myself run, like I was running backwards right in front of myself, but I didn't see me, if that makes since. I was out of breath but had to keep going because I just knew I had to get somewhere fast. And I kept looking over my shoulder as if someone was chasing me. Then I turned right at the stop of the road and skidded to a stop, a horrified look on my once determined face.

Next, a girl was attacking me. She had black hair and brown eyes full of hate as she glared at me. I don't know what I had done to her, but I know I have never met her. She had this big sword made of what looked to be bronze, which confused me a little because I honestly thought swords were silver. Well, she was swinging it around at my head and I dodged her, which made her madder. Then she did some combo attack and I had to perform a weird jump to the right to prevent my decapitation.

Then, the scene shifted yet again into the most horrifying one. My eyes shined with confidence and my face was determined as I smashed the window with a big rock, climbed through, and fell onto Morgan's bed, which was empty. I ran toward the stairs, heading for my room, but halted to a stop. I turned toward the kitchen. There, lying in a little pool of blood was Cristy. She had multiple stab wounds and her neck looked broken. I ran to her, dropping down to my knees, getting blood all over my light blue jeans, and checked her pulse. Nothing. No pulse. No heartbeat. Cristy was dead. _Dead_. NO.

Then Morgan staggered into the room, laughing. "There you are, Auden. I told her you weren't in Kentucky. I enjoyed doing that, you know." Then she laughs some more. Then I had a surge of anger. I didn't feel sad, or guilty, just rage. I got up and charged at her.

Then the dream ended. I woke up screaming, and quickly flipped over to block it with my pillow.

_Sissy's Song_ was playing on my iPod. Stupid song about his sister dying; I do not need to hear that right now. I yanked the head phones out and tossed it at the foot of my bed. Then, I scrambled over to Cristy's bed to make sure she was breathing. She was. Oh, thank God. She smiled in her sleep, and muttered something. I hope _she_ was having a nice dream.

I collapsed back in my bed with a sigh. So she's _not_ dead. Yet. It was just a stupid dream. Dreams _do not_ come true. Do they? Cristy is _not_ going to die. Well, not soon. I _will_ protect her, and never leave her. _Never._

_But what if it does? _Some part of my brain contradicted me. But what if it does come true? What if the dream is prophetic? What if it, all of it, is going to happen? Why do I remember details of it, like I'm wearing my Paramore T-shirt with my favorite pair of blue jeans and that they get more rips as the dream goes on? What am I running from? Why did I look so horrified? Why the heck is that girl attacking me? Who _is_ she? Why do I leave Cristy? What does Morgan mean Cristy told her I was in Kentucky? Most of all, why was Cristy dead?

NO! It is NOT going to happen! Stop contemplating things that won't happen!

I couldn't help but remember, though, when I was eight and I dreamed I was crying in an orphanage, telling some random kid how my mom and dad died. And they did. Four days later I was crying, and screaming to Loren how Rebecca and Adam died after he had said something about them I don't even remember now. I've had similar dreams, but not quite as important as that one.

That dream came true. I could remember every detail of it. It came true; why shouldn't this one?

The big red numbers on the alarm clock said it was 3:17 AM. Ah, great. Stupid clock. I tried, but I couldn't fall back asleep. Stupid dream.

My brain continued to contemplate 'what ifs' and I wanted to yell "Shut up! Get over the stupid dream already! It is not gonna happen!" at myself, but that just sounds crazy.

To tell the truth, I was a little scared to fall back asleep. I was scared that I would dream the same thing again, and I did not want to see Cristy dead again. It's a scary thought: what if Cristy dies. It terrifies me thinking about what I would do if she died. All my attempts at protecting her would crash down into failure. The only person I have in life would be ripped away; I'd be all alone in the world. And that thought scares the heck out of me.

At around 6:50 (fifty minutes after I would normally wake up), my exhaustion led me into sleep, giving me a good ten minutes of sleep before I _have_ to wake up again. That's not much time to go into REM, and that's when you dream, right? Honestly, I have no clue how subconscious minds work.

This brings my total hours of sleep to close to four hours. Oh, man, I'm gonna be in a really pissed off mood when I wake up.

* * *

A/N: As always, please review!

I'll tell you right now, someone's gonna die in this story. Can ya guess? It's rather obvious, now. It'll be a new (but fun) experiment for me: Killing off someone. Is it good that I'm gonna enjoy writing about killing someone? It sounds kinda crazy.

OMG, me and my friend had the funniest conversation about this story, though she knows next to nothing about it. Okay, sorry, that was random.

Oh, and about songs. I dunno if everyone else likes the songs I listen to. So if you want, you can tell me songs that might fit this story. 'Cause I don't want to bore everyone with a song I like, that no one else does.


	4. Chapter 4

How to Save a Life:

Chapter 4: Three Old Ladies Cut a String

"Aaaauudeeeen! Auden, wake up!" Cristy's very high-pitched voice screamed in my ear.

"Mmhm." I muttered, rolling over, "Go awaaay."

Then she climbs in my bed and starts bouncing. "Wake up, Auden! Auden, wake up! Wake-y up-y!" She sung in that way little kids sing most of what they say. Stupid soprano voice, I'm trying to sleep here!

I sigh. "Listen, Cristy. I slept around 4 hours last night, and I'm really tired, so could you please just go away?"

"But its 7:15 and we gotta go to school!"

I took a while to register that, and then I sat strait up, making myself dizzy. I scrambled out of bed. Holy crap! 7:15! School starts in fifteen minutes! I randomly picked the first set of cloths my eyes laid on: a light blue Hollister shirt, and jean shorts coming to my knees. I quickly brushed my hair and ran down stairs.

On normal mornings, I don't really take much time getting ready; I don't really care what I wear. Also, I'm normally a big morning person that wakes up at like 6:00. But we normally leave around 7:10 because the ride's not really that long. I eat breakfast at school, but there's not going to be much time for that today.

I got to school at 7:29 and by the time I got in the building and upstairs it was 7:31. Ooh, I'm late by a minute. Joy. No time to put my stuff up…and I just realized I left my stupid backpack in my and Cristy's room. Ah, crap.

I walked in ATR (Auden's Torture Room, if you've forgotten) and Mrs. Webster's scrunched up face immediately yells, "Your late, Clark!"

This gets me annoyed. I'd already had a bad morning, and here she is nagging me about crap I already know, starting my day off bad, too. "Yeah, I already know! So shut up and leave me alone." I said, walking past her. I never fail to speak my mind, especially when I'm irritated. Like if some girl walks up and says, "Does this shirt make me look fat." I would reply with something like, "Yes. And those shorts make your butt look fat, too…and your legs." I really hate lying and people who lie.

A chorus of 'oooooohs' spread the classroom.

"One more outburst like that and I am defiantly sending you to the principle's office!"

"Ooo, I'm scared. Like I haven't been there before. What's he gonna do to me, hmm? Call my parents? Give me another afterschool detention I won't show up to? Send me to anger management class? Anything he would do is better than being forced in this room listening to your horrible mouth talk about boring crap that no one cares about making me wish I'd never been born…again."

"That is it! Go to the office now!" She screamed making a vein pulsed in her reddening forehead.

"Okay, jeez, woman, don't hurt yourself."

With that I left. As I shut the door, I heard Kate Fraser mutter, "I care, Mrs. Webster."

"Thank you, dear. You are so much better than her."

"I know."

Oh, that's nice. You know what Kate, I've been through much worse than you have, and you still think your better than me. All you got is book smartness, and that doesn't matter in my world. If you were me for a day, I bet that wouldn't help once. I wanted to go on telling her off in my mind, but I stopped because it just seemed crazy, like she could hear me. I don't like feeling crazy, you know. It's a crazy feeling.

I walked to the principle's office on the first floor thinking, once again, how horrible little Cristy looked laying on that floor, covered in her blood and wounds, staring up at nothing. How bad it would be if that actually happened. How Morgan had done that.

I swore to myself, then and there, that I would never let that happen. I'd never leave Cristy; I'd stay to protect her. I will NOT let my dream come true. I will keep her alive.

And _no_ one is going to stop me!

(/)(\)(/)(\)

During school, my stress, irritation, and fatigue built. I got more and more annoyed with little things during first through fifth periods. I got really frustrated in Language Arts that I almost got sent to the freaking principles office again. Last time he let me go to second period after telling me off for half the first period and making me do some dumb worksheet I didn't really pay attention to.

Well, in Mr. Lobb's class, first, we had to turn in that stupid essay we had to do for today, that I didn't do, but if I had, I would've still gotten in trouble because I left my backpack at home. And _then_, we had this multiple choice pop quiz about Spelling, which I totally hate. I tried, believe you me, I did. But they all looked wrong to me because of my stupid dyslexia. I got frustrated and wanted to rip up the stupid piece of paper, or shoot something through Mr. Lobb's head. But I ending up just cussing it out and going through and putting A as all the answers. And I hardly ever cuss; I normally just say something like crap, or heck.

Then I cooled down a little in music class with Mrs. Sarah.

We were all playing that _Why Can't We Be Friends _song. She reminds me a lot of that music teacher from _Bridge to Terribithia_, you know, the one Jessie has a crush on.

Since most of the kids there can't really play an instrument, they were all banging on percussion instruments in tune to the rhythm we were playing. We being me with my guitar, Mrs. Sarah with hers, a girl named Grace with her viola, and a guy called Tristan with his trumpet, which sounds kinda weird with only percussion and strings.

Now, we are in PE class.

"Now, kids, go change and we'll go outside and play kickball." Mr. Piles announced. There were a few following 'COOL's' and a lot of groans. I personally didn't have a problem with it. I like going outside and doing stuff like this. This is a class that I like the subject but not the teacher. I really don't like Mr. Piles of Poop.

So we all changed into our gym cloths. The uniform is blue, white, and silver, our school colors. The top was white with silver and blue writing saying the school name, with blue shorts.

Outside, I walked past a few pretty girls complaining about how 'hot it was out here, that they should not be out in said heat, and how hard the stupid sun was shining'.

"Suck it up." I told them. They glared at me.

We all walked out to the big grass yard to the left of the school driveway. It was right by the road; someone could easily kick the ball into the road.

The coach slit us into two teams. The first time I kicked, I took my frustration out on the ball. You know how some people pretend the ball is a person's face that they dislike? Well, it works. Morgan's face got drilled in the ground through a gap between Heather and her friend, Kayla, two of the most non-athletic people in this grade. I got to third before they could even get it in. Ohh, what now? I'm so cool.

The next time though, I got distracted.

Across the street were three really old ladies. I could've sworn they weren't there not two seconds ago. Well, they were in a stand like thing knitting these giant neon orange socks. And when I say giant, I mean it. They were like bigger than a sweater.

And these ladies were really, really old. They looked like they were over 200 years old. Like really over 200 years. They had wispy white hair up in white bandanas, really boney arms, and your typical really old lady. And they all had white dresses on.

But the really odd thing about this was that they were looking directly at me. All the way from across the street. All of them. At me alone.

The ball rolled right past me. Jenna, who was rolling the ball, screamed, "Dude, what's your problem!" She turned around to look toward the three ladies. "What? Does your boyfriend live in that house?"

House? What? Oh, there was a house past the old ladies in the booth. Maybe they lived there or something. Still, they seem important. And why are they staring at me?

"You really don't see them?"

"Huh? Who? There's no one over there."

"Yes, they are!"

"Nuh-uh!"

I turned to Austin, who was next to kick. I pointed over to them. I asked him, still not taking my eyes off them, "Do you see them?"

"No, Dude. No one's over there."

Ah great. What the heck's wrong with me? Why can't they see them? They are clearly there.

"You can kick then." I said, weakly.

I walked over to the back of the line, as the middle lady took out this giant pair of scissors to match the giant socks. With them, she cut the bright orange string, all the while still looking at me. I started feeling sick, then. What the heck does that mean? Isn't there like myths about old ladies cutting strings?

Just then Nico walks over to me.

"Do you see them?"

"No."

I sigh. "Great."

"What do they look like, Auden?"

I turn to him, disbelievingly, "What? You believe me?"

"Yeah."

"Well, um, there's three ladies over there, and they're old and-" I turn back to look at them, and they aren't there! There was no trace of any old lady, or they're string in that person's front yard. "-and they aren't there anymore. Were did they go?"

Nico sighed, "Just tell me what they look like. Were they knitting? Did they have these big socks? Were they looking at you? Did they have a cord?"

I nodded. "And the middle one cut the string."

"Oh, that's great. Very nice."

"Why the sarcasm? Where'd they go? Why can no one else see them?"

"Because they do that."

"Do what?"

"Leave after-...Look I probably shouldn't tell you."

"Please."

"Nope."

I glared at him. "Isn't there, like, a story about three old ladies cutting strings? Like it's the String of Life or something." I'd heard that somewhere before. Or watched a movie or something. The String of Life sounded like a familiar phrase. But if it's not, I'm going to feel really stupid.

"…Yes."

"_What?_ Is it true?"

"Look, I said I wouldn't tell you! Now you should probably just forget about this."

"You think I can forget that? Listen, I've had a really bad day. I dreamed my little sister's death last night. And now I see weird ladies cut strings that no one else can see, and you are the only person here that seems to know a tad bit about what I'm talking about, and yet you won't tell me. What's your deal?" I felt so frustrated, like I was going to start screaming and kicking people. And I wanted to, very much.

"You don't need to know."

"The heck I don't! Does this mean I'm gonna die, or something?" I felt little tears of frustration in my eyes. Can't the guy just tell me?

"Usually."

"What? This is usual?"

"Yes."

I groaned. So I'm gonna die? I so don't believe that. Well, the death part, yeah, I know I'm gonna die. I just don't believe it'll be soon and that three ladies decide that. If I die, how can I protect Cristy? Nothing's gonna stop me from doing that. "Well, tell me more, then. You know I don't believe you."

"You should. And no, I won't. I don't know for sure what you are-"

"What the _heck_ does that mean?"

"-And I'm not saying anything else."

I glared at Nico. Why can't things be normal for once? Why can't people give me strait answers? All I know is that seeing three old ladies cut a string is a little bit normal and that it most likely means I'm gonna die. Great. That's real nice. I still don't believe that. Who says Nico is even telling the truth. Maybe he's doing this to make fun of me hallucinating or whatever the crap it was. Because I just don't believe that was real; I mean no one else saw it.

Now I have something else to keep from happening that there is a good chance it can't happen, but if it could, there is also a chance it will happen. Now there's a confusing thought. Let's simplify it. They might if they could. They might be. They could be if they can. There we go, that's only a little more confusing.

Okay, so, I cannot let this happen, because if it does, I couldn't protect Cristy. How could I stop Cristy from dying if I was dead? And I swore to myself that nothing would stop me from not letting Cristy die. And dying would stop me from doing so. So I have to stop myself from possibly dying in order to stop Cristy from possibly dying. And nothing is going to stop me from doing those. I will protect Cristy. I_ will_.

And then, after I get Cristy out of danger, then those old ladies can come kill me or whatever. As long as I am sure Cristy is in no harm's way, then they can. But I _am_ going to protect her first.

Because if I can't, if she does die, well, it would be the end of everything that really matters, I'd hate myself forever, I'd die to, and nothing at all would be left.

A/N: Sorry it's taken so long.

I'm seriously thinking about going back and redo-ing this so that chapter 1 and 2 are the first chapter together but make it sorter and less boring. Because, it bored even me reading that chapter two and now i have no clue why I did it like that. And put this chapter and the last chapter together to, because I'm on chapter 8 and she still hasn't got to camp, so...should I keep it the same and get her there by around chapter 10, or should I skip a few things and get her there by five or six?

And I just realized some people might think that this is starting off like The Lightning Theif did. I really hope you don't think that because I'm not meaning it to be. It never crossed my mind till a few minutes ago.

Please review. Give me tips, advice, tell me if this is the worst story ever and it needs to be burned.


	5. Author's Note

A/N:

Dear Readers,

I am not sure about where to go with this story. Don't worry, though, I have no plans to discontinue it. I've got a plot planned out with a timeline full of drama, psychological conflict, a quest, the works. And of course typical teenage drama stuff about guys and friendships and fitting in. It's just the immediate plot I don't know what to do with. I'd like you all's opinion on a few things, like which option would be better for making it more original, non-Mary Sue-ish, and easy to read. Please, please review and tell me what you think, so I'll know what will make you, the reader, happier. If no one answers me, I'll just have to go with my gut.

1. First things first, please go back and read (or skim) chapters one and two, unless you can remember. They have a lot of random ADHD moments and vivid descriptions that I have mixed feelings about. One) they are really annoying. Two) They show more of Auden's character and the way she thinks. You get to know her better.

So, if you choose option one, I'll go back and re-write chapters one and two so it's just one chapter. But if I do this, there will be no funny descriptions of teachers or classes. No fight with Jenna. No Nico in science class scene. It'd just be a very brief summary of her classes in like three paragraphs and the end of the chapter. And it would defiantly not have crazy schedules with 9 classes.

Option two, I leave chapter 2 like it is and just re-write some things in chapter 1. I already have this rewrite done. I re-read ch 1 and some things greatly annoyed me now, so I'm writing chapter 1 over in either option. ...or i could just leave everything like it is, if you actually like it.

You choose.

2. Think ahead to immediate future chapters (5-10). Would you rather her get to camp in chapter 11-ish, or her get there in chapter 6 and me cut out 3 chapters of useless things? I prefer chapter 6, but I already have all the chapters up to 8 written. I have recently re-read those chapters and do not like them. What should I do?

3. This one is for way ahead in the future, but I really need to know so I can plan it out with everything else. Should this story be Nico/OC? It started out not being so, but that could very well change, if you all want it. Ha, if it were to be, there'd be like 2 plots all doubled up on each other. Auden's in for some serious hard time. Do you want it? Think it'd be cute? I've heard Nico/OC stories rarely turn out any good, but if you want it...

That's all.

Please, please, please tell me what you think. I really need to know so I can plan this. And write it.

Sorry for the wait, guys. I've been busy and lost all inspiration for PJO. It randomly came back today...

Also, I have band camp starting in 5 days. And apparently it's gonna be really hard for us color guard. My mom's been told to give me one last hug, 'cause they're gonna kill us this year. Therefore, I'm gonna be really busy and tired. If I were you, I wouldn't expect anything at least until August. I might be able to do some work over the weekends or before July 6, if you give me your opinions on the above questions.

Thanks,

WorldOfMagic711

PS: I'd like to know what happened to the spellchecker on doc manager! Just noticed that..

This author's note will be removed whenever I post chapter 5 (AKA whenever I decide what to do.)


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